The legendary Qilin auspicious beast really exists! What kind of animal is it?

Friends who work hard in other places will bring some local specialties back home for their relatives and friends. The ancients were no exception. But you probably don’t know that in Chinese history, there were a series of oolong incidents that shocked the whole country because of “bringing specialties”.

Back to the Yongle period of the Ming Dynasty, Emperor Zhu Di sent eunuch Zheng He to lead a fleet to the Western Ocean. Each time he sailed, he brought back many local specialties, mainly various spices (mostly pepper).

However, if you smell too much spices, you will get tired of them. The key is that ordinary people don’t know much about these things. The government especially expected Zheng He to bring gifts that would enhance the prestige of the Celestial Empire. In the 12th year of Yongle (1414), Zheng He’s little brother overseas, the Sultan of Bengal, sent a big “gift” - a unicorn!

In fact, the Chinese also wanted to bring the Kirin to China before, but unfortunately the Kirin died on the way, and only a head was brought back in a potion bucket. Although it is not very clear, it seems to be true! Later, Hayao Miyazaki's "Princess Mononoke" borrowed this joke.

However, this time the Qilin is alive! Next...

In 1415, the Mahdiri Dynasty of Kilwa in Malin (Somalia) sent a living Qilin!

Then in 1417 and 1421, messengers from Aden sent living unicorns.

In 1433, envoys from Arabia sent a living unicorn.

The last time a unicorn was sent to Bangladesh was in 1438 (the third year of the Zhengtong reign), when the emperor was already the great-grandson of Zhu Di. This series of activities was called "unicorn tribute".

When the living Qilin arrived for the first time, Zhu Di ordered painters to paint the "Auspicious Qilin Picture" and asked scholars who could write poetry to write related poems. A total of sixteen volumes were kept in the cabinet.

The common people even regarded the Qilin sent by foreign friends as a mythical animal, kneeling on both sides of the street to worship it. It was just like the scene when Song Dandan returned to the village after appearing on CCTV.

What did the unicorn look like? The History of Ming Dynasty records that "the unicorn's front feet are nine feet high, its back feet are six feet high, its neck is six feet long, it has two short horns, and its body is like a deer with an ox's tail." It looked very similar to the unicorn in Chinese legends! So Zhu Di sent someone to draw it.

Readers who see the picture will definitely be shocked. Is this a Qilin?

It’s obviously a giraffe, isn’t it?! But in Somali, giraffe is “giri”, which happens to be pronounced similarly to Qilin, and this giraffe happens to have hooves, horns, and a cow’s tail…

But doesn’t the Qilin have scales? Don’t worry, the ancients always loved to imagine, isn’t this pattern similar to scales? So there are other versions of this picture, and Chen Zhang of the Qing Dynasty copied and processed it into the picture below.

Some people draw even more exaggerated ones. Below you will see a picture of a unicorn from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the United States. The long neck seems to be inherited from Shen Du... It's simply a dinosaur~

In addition to the Qilin, Zheng He also brought other monsters such as the ostrich, zebra, and some others that he could not name so he had to transliterate them. For example, the long-horned maha beast is actually a right-horned antelope. Later, Samarkand also paid tribute to the kharaghu, which is actually the transliteration of the foreign name of the giraffe, "giraffe".

During the Song Dynasty, some people had heard that "there was a strange beast in the Kingdom of Babalili (today's Berbera, Somalia), called the camel-ox, with skin like a leopard, hooves like a cow, five peaks, a neck nine feet long, and a height of more than ten feet (Continued Records of Natural History by Li Shi of the Southern Song Dynasty)", but no one took it seriously.

Why did Zhu Di and others attach so much importance to giraffes?

Is it unanimously agreed that it is the Qilin?

Because Zhu Di usurped the throne and became emperor, the people were unstable at that time, and the appearance of the auspicious beast Qilin meant that the world was peaceful and the saint was alive, successfully diverting domestic conflicts! Thus, a big joke performed by people all over the country was born.

In the late Ming Dynasty and the Qing Dynasty, the Chinese gradually realized that the Qilin sent by foreign countries was actually a giraffe, and they would not kowtow to it like crazy fans, but our neighbor Japan was still kept in the dark. In order to deceive the government to allocate funds to purchase foreign animals, the zoo director Ishikawa Chiyomatsu in the late Qing Dynasty insisted that the giraffe was the mythical beast Qilin and introduced it to Japan. Although Ishikawa was exposed and dismissed two years later, this name has been deeply rooted in the hearts of the people. To this day, the Japanese write the Chinese character for giraffe as "Qilin".

Author: Zhu Guangsi

Science writer

Member of Beijing Science Writers Association

Source: Damei Science